Emerging America embraces social media as a means to fulfill our mission to provide high-quality professional development to K-12 teachers on History, primary sources, and the Common Core State Standards. Quality professional development is more than just attending workshops and seminars. It requires a sustained process of learning and developing ideas about how our work impacts students. Social media offers a space where this kind of development can continue long after the workshops are over.

Through Facebook, Twitter, and regular updates to our blog, we will:

"Civility in politics is a contradiction in terms," declared a historian colleague with a chuckle when I suggested the topic for a possible lecture series. Still, like most Americans, I find the current national political discourse worrisome. My history educator's mind makes me wonder, "Has it always been this way?" Well… of course, there were the Revolutionary War, Shays Rebellion, the Whiskey Rebellion, slave insurrections, the Civil War, Homestead and other labor conflicts, lynching, race riots, Stonewall riots… And despite continuing bitter words, it's hard to imagine today the equivalent of Rep. Preston Brooks'es beating of Sen. Charles Sumner on the very floor of the Senate. (See image by Winslow Homer, "Arguments of the Chivalry,"from the collections of the Library of Congress.)  In actuality, by most measures, political violence has declined enormously in recent years. The Oklahoma City Bombing in 1995 marked the last large-scale eruption of wholly domestic political violence in the U.S. Deeper questions arise: - To what extent does the American Political system effectively allay violence by offering genuine change through voting and other nonviolent means? Does the system effectively balance the factions that James Madison envisioned in Federalist 10? - Do mass media today only inflame passions? Or do they also provide a vital outlet for unpopular and contrarian views? - What other factors are at play? For one source of rich debate steeped in primary sources and thoughtful analysis, I recommend the ongoing discussion on Civility on the Constitution Daily, blog of the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia. The Center is a non-partisan, non-profit organization dedicated to education and debate about citizenship and of course, our own Federal Constitution. Recent articles include "Should the people be able to veto Supreme Court decisions?" and an "opinion lab" for classroom use, asking, "Is divided government good or bad for the country?" Sign in, and speak up.

This new blog will share our deep-rooted experience at the local, regional and national levels of history education. We will present thoughtful discussion, links to powerful primary sources, and challenging and useful tools to stimulate critical thinking in the classroom. We will tap the tremendous expertise of the Collaborative for Educational Services to meet the needs of struggling learners.